Failing to remember where one placed an item can be frustrating. Many times, the remote control of a TV can't be found, finding a pair of missing pink sneakers causes one to miss catching the school bus on time, or losing a loved toy that requires love and huggies is a sad event.
The current method of locating these items is by an exhaustive physical search. As “Mom” is telling you to hurry up, the bus is coming, “where did you put your sneakers?” You get even more frantic. The search space you are viewing may in fact contain the sneakers but due to the rapidity and shortness of time, your brain fails to recognize it. Then you miss your bus. Now, your “Mom” has to drive you to school.
Several previous inventions address the problem of locating a target. One, U.S. Pat. No. 7,113,089, issued Sep. 26, 2006 describes a portable device that can be used to identify a target using wireless signals. The target and the portable device must have a wireless transponder inside of them. The user enters a desired target into the handheld and moves the handheld to locate the best signal strength and moves in that direction. Two weakness of this invention are 1) the target must contain a wireless transponder and 2) the method of locating the target uses a maximum wireless signal strength which can be inaccurate since reflections from walls may mislead the search for the target.
A second reference, U.S. Pub. No. 2006/0009167, filed Apr. 7, 2005 describes a technique for guiding a person along a path in an adverse environment such as a fire, chemical spill, etc. The user wears a protective suit and drops wireless transponders along the path they are moving along. The transponders are dropped from a backpack automatically at regular intervals and the user can use these transponders to find his way back. This is equivalent to the procedure that “Hansel and Gretel” used by dropping bread to find their way back from the woods. Unfortunately for “Hansel and Gretel”, the birds ate the bread so they couldn't return. But in the second reference a wireless transponder is used not to locate a target but provide for a way of guiding a user along a path to get back to the beginning. As stated previously, the second reference does not offer a way of finding a target.
Visual target recognition is a matching algorithm that can compare a target with a stored version in the database in an attempt to get a match. Aircraft and missiles used visual guidance systems can use a visual display to find a target as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,349,898, issued Feb. 26, 2002. The visual system is used guide the missile to the target. The target recognition system inside the missile is used to control and direct the missile to its target for ultimate destruction. However, the user needs to see the target before releasing the missile. If the target's location is already known before the release of the missile, then the target is not lost. This is in contrast to the description of the invention in this application where the target's location is not known to the user.
It is desirable to have a tool that can look for and find lost items so that life can continue at its normal pace. Since many lost items do not contain an RF tag or wireless transponder a different way of locating these lost items is required. It is the purpose of this invention to find a target that does not have wireless tags or any type of wireless devices embedded in the desired or possible lost target.